Comments on: Andre Norton’s YA novelshttp://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/06/andre-nortons-ya-novels/
A Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy blog featuring news, interviews, reviews, points of view and fun stuff.Thu, 26 May 2016 01:15:24 -0500hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7By: Andrew Liptakhttp://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/06/andre-nortons-ya-novels/#comment-141912
Mon, 09 Jun 2014 12:16:47 +0000http://www.sfsignal.com/?p=94835#comment-141912Yeah, I need to re-word that. She read numerous books as a kid, and continued to do so would probably be more accurate.
]]>By: Marilynn Byerlyhttp://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/06/andre-nortons-ya-novels/#comment-141884
Sun, 08 Jun 2014 03:26:47 +0000http://www.sfsignal.com/?p=94835#comment-141884I recall a number of strong female secondary/partner characters in her early books, but I can’t give exact tiles. One involved a dystopian disaster where the characters were trying to survive.

THE GIFTS OF ASTI, 1948, has a female main character.

]]>By: Paul Connellyhttp://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/06/andre-nortons-ya-novels/#comment-141883
Sun, 08 Jun 2014 01:55:41 +0000http://www.sfsignal.com/?p=94835#comment-141883This part doesn’t sound right to me: “Throughout her school-aged years, Norton found herself deep in science-fiction stories, becoming enamored of Mary Shelley, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Robert Bloch.” Then it says she graduated from high school in 1930. I don’t think Heinlein and Asimov were getting published back then.

I also don’t remember her having any female protagonists (as opposed to just non-viewpoint characters) until Year of the Unicorn in 1965, whereas the article implies that she had introduced them prior to the 1960s.

Norton and Heinlein were both mainstays of my tweens. She had more exotic settings and more consistently enjoyable books, but his best two or three [juveniles] stuck in my memory a little more. But I have held onto my copies of Star Gate, Galactic Derelict, Star Rangers, Storm Over Warlock, and the first few Witch World books, so I can re-read them when my memories of them get too dim.

]]>By: Marilynn Byerlyhttp://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014/06/andre-nortons-ya-novels/#comment-141874
Sat, 07 Jun 2014 17:19:53 +0000http://www.sfsignal.com/?p=94835#comment-141874Andre Norton is one of the most influential writers ever. Probably the most influential to older women who write science fiction fantasy, and paranormal romance.

When she became ill, I belonged to a group of female writers, many of whom are major names in fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal romance. During our discussion about her, I was not so surprised to learn that every one of us over the age of forty got into writing because of Andre Norton. Her books were the first to have girls in them as important characters, and the girls stood right beside the male heroes in the fight. He could not win without her. That was earth-shattering to most of us and made us want to write stories with powerful girls in them.

Norton wrote everything from Gothic to mystery to adult science fiction, and she wrote all of it well.

Baen has reprinted many of her SF books, I also recommend the ANDRE NORTON MEGAPACK which an ebook only collection of some of her SF and early mysteries, and TALES FROM HIGH HALLACK: THE COLLECTED SHORT STORIES OF ANDRE NORTON, VOLUME 1 which has many of her early short stories from anthologies and magazines.